Sunday, June 21, 2009

Happy father's day to the best dad ever: Happy father's day to my darling husband, my wonderful father, and my excellent father-in-law. Also to all the other wonderful fathers out there, because I know there are a lot.

We went to the fair on Saturday, on a quest for fun and fried food. We found plenty of both. Wesley and Sara about to embark on the big swing. Charlie was very nervous for them and had to give them both big hugs when they finished up.

Charlie and I watched them on the crazy mouse roller coster.

They let us all come in together, and then put Greg and I on the ferris wheel and then started it without Wes and Sara. So they had to get on the next bucket. Here we are from the opposite side of the wheel, where Wesley was sitting at.They were at the top of the ferris wheel when we got off.Charlie showed absolutely no qualms about running off on his own.The delicious food of the day was this:It was a potato, curled up kinda like how you do apples when you make an apple pie. Then they were fried and sprinkled with the most delicious lemon pepper ever. I think I need two or three more. (We also had funnel cake, roasted corn, fried snickers, carmel apple towers, battered potatoes, and cotton candy. Only 3 or 4 thousand calories or so.)

Charlie fulfilled his life dream and played the game where you pick the duck and win a prize.

By the end of the day, Charlie had to be "handled" by a master. But he was generally pretty well behaved.We had SOOOO much fun. And we got these cool group tickets from Sara's work that allows us to go back the whole month, so you might see us back there again!

Our oldest niece graduated from high school last weekend. We got to go to graduation, but I didn't manage to bring the camera, so here are pictures from the party afterward. Emily and I were crying in the corner about the mosquitoes who were attaching us. Notice the sweaters...we were trying to avoid bites. Charlie was wearing mine, and Emily was bundled up in hers.

The Graduate.

The whole big group! I think it was once of the first times we were all together in a long time...we were only missing Adam.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

1) Charlie's ear: Greg peeled the antiseptic glue of yesterday. Most of the scab came off too. In two words, completely disgusting. But whatever. At least it is better! (And I can wash him. He has had some oatmeal in his eyebrow for like three days, and I couldn't properly wash him or his hair when he had that glue stuff on.)

2) The LSAT. I am not sure I can write this without feelings of stress and despair overtaking me, but I am going to try. As some of you know or inferred from the last post, the LSAT was originally scheduled for the morning of Saturday, June 6th and then was rescheduled for the afternoon of Monday, June 8th. Greg took it yesterday and just didn't feel up to it I guess. He has taken countless practices and scored as high as 168, so he was hoping to do about that well on the one he took yesterday. However, he came away from it not feeling great. He thought he was in the 160-165 range, which is pretty good, but not as well as he knows he could be. Maybe it was the afternoon, maybe it was the stress of the reschedule; who knows. However, Greg knows that he can do better than he did, so he had the score CANCELLED and we will therefore never know how he did yesterday! It is a little bit frustrating, but he has decided to take it again, and a caveat of taking the LSAT twice is that they don't take your highest score, they take an average of all scores. So, he decided that he was safer cancelling it and just taking it again than risking this potentially lower score bringing him down. Therefore, he will be hitting the books even harder and taking it again in September. He will still be able to apply for law school in time to enter in the fall of 2010, according to the original plan. This new plan will just add more time to study (and more money into paying for the test and study materials again). And a little bit less time with Greg/Daddy around the house, but we can deal with it. Thanks for every one's prayers and good vibes; we will need them again in September!

3) Biting: who knows some great solutions to discipline a violent one year old? Charlie is still very good natured, but he doesn't realize that his piranha like mouth can really hurt.

4) Misc: we have about 36,872 friends getting married, graduating from miscellaneous places and levels or having babies this summer. I need to invest in some more Target gift cards!

5) I recently realized (while rating and reviewing countless books on goodreads) that I am the opposite of a book snob. I pretty much enjoy almost everything I read. If I score anything lower than a 3 star, it is kind of an event for me. Not that I don't recognize classic literature as better than chick lit. Just that I pretty much like both. Random.

6) My youngest brother stayed with me last weekend, and I remembered how much I love him, my older brother, and my sister. Of course my darling brother who lives with us I always remember, since he is always there to help out/hang out. (You can always be the weird uncle in the basement.) I have great siblings!

Monday, June 8, 2009

Today at one o'clock (don't even get me started on the fact that the test is randomly on a Monday afternoon) Greg takes the LSAT! Wish him luck, pray for him, or send him good vibes; whatever is your style, we appreciate it!

In other notes, this is our 249th blog post. Therefore, the next one will be the 250th, which is a milestone! Didn't know I was going to be a blog junkie.... =)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I couldn't leave it on that note, so here are some pictures of the boys.

Playing Rockband. I love how they all have the exact same expression.

Charlie loves "horsey" lately. If he can reach our back he tries to climb up. Sometimes I am sitting doing laundry or something and he will come over and try and push me over until he can climb on my back. Charlie got on Greg the other night and sat and bounced for a few minutes while Greg explained to him about how his ACL was torn and now he has a bad knee and that is why he can't crawl around with a baby on his back. Charlie was not sympathetic.In the end Charlie won. He rode Daddy around the whole house.

Today Charlie was with Grandma Brenda taking one of her friends to the doctor at the Kaiser hospital in Riverside. He was there allllll day and spent most of it trying to escape into the nurse's quarters (they were only too happy to oblige). After a relatively accident free day on the way out, he fell and landed on one of the benches. It was made of granite and cut right through his ear.

I suppose it is fairly lucky that he was at an actual hospital when he got his first real wound; urgent care sealed it with antiseptic glue (which strangely enough can't be in sunlight for more than five minutes. Weird.) Getting it fixed was far more traumatic than getting the actual wound as it entailed sitting still. The doctor swaddled him in a sheet so he couldn't move his arms and then had my mom lay across him to hold him still and two nurses holding his head while he screamed bloody murder. I am counting my blessings that I wasn't there, as I simply wouldn't have been able to handle it.

It looks so horrible and is worse in person. And since head wounds bleed so much, there was a veritable pool of blood left in the wake of this incident.

He seems to be okay, actually. A small amount of yelping when I took his shirt off (there will be button up shirts for the rest of the week). But check out all the blood on his shirt.

Thing number 82,346 they don't tell you before you had kids: when they get hurt it hurts worse than when you do.

(By the way, don't mind the butchered hair cut. Goes back to his refusal to sit still. I had to get two assistants to help distract him enough to take the pictures of his ear. So obviously cutting his hair the other day was difficult as well.)

Monday, June 1, 2009

1) Things Charlie has learned to do in the last week: bite until he draws blood, put smashed up cereal into the clean laundry basket, and remove his diaper.

2) I like TV. I know it is sort of vogue to say "I hate TV; it is all trash" but I am afraid I am not one of those cool people. We have several TV shows that we like (unfortunately all off for the summer months, except Burn Notice, which comes back on this week) but I have also been introduced to the fact that I like watching sports on TV. Greg and I have been watching football for a few years now, and now Spencer has us addicted to basketball (which in TV form I like more than football. Sorry Greg.)2.5) I am sad that the Cavs won't be playing the Lakers in the finals. But GO LAKERS anyway.

3) I love Andy Samberg and I enjoyed the MTV Movie Awards last night. I vote that Eminem had no idea about the Sasha Cohen thing, and also that every single person involved with the movie Twilight is ridiculously awkward and needs some training in how to speak. Except the one who was from the Disney channel. It appears that the Disney channel grooms its child stars. Although Miley Cyrus is still fairly awkward. Even though I do like that song. (I know I shall be persecuted for this later by my family, but I do!)3.5) In addition to basketball, I have recently grown to love (mostly because of my brother who lives with us) Saturday Night Live. It just kills me.

4) The Beehives (12-13 year old girls) in my ward are the sweetest girls in the whole world.

5) Happy June! A friend from church who works for the National Weather Service says that people have been accusing him of causing this slightly unfortunate weather we have been having lately, so I won't complain.

6) Charlie is getting teeth numbers 7 and 8 currently. They are molars and allegedly hurt really badly, so I feel sorry for him (even though this is causing him to act out. Sorry to all the babies he made cry at church yesterday. And to their mothers.) But it is pretty funny because his first two teeth were on the bottom and then the last six have been on the top. With no bottom ones in sight. He looks like a wood chuck with an under bite.